


brings your hazard back

by signalbeam



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: Gen, Jealousy, Jossed, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:51:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renard and Annie go looking for some good old-fashioned love stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brings your hazard back

Renard runs out of books on their second day in Yosemite. It’s almost a week and a half before Annie lets him restock. It’s in Boston, where they’ll spend the next three days—two and a half, now that Annie and Kat have slept most of their first day away—before they go back to the Court. 

The hotel suite has a little living room with a foldout futon, and despite their exhaustion, the near two weeks they spent giggling to each other on car rides and at night in their tent, lit by pale moonlight or a small electric lamp, Annie and Kat spent their first night in Boston watching movies and laughing into pillows to keep from waking Kat’s parents in the bedroom. It’s noon before they wake, and hours after before they’re dressed and ready to go to the bookstore Renard found. He’s especially impatient because he had to use the computer. There is nothing more undignifying than typing with plush hands. 

“Hurry,” he says, in a hushed tone. The other indignity Boston has inflicted on him: the city does not take kindly to wolves. He has taken a dog’s shape, medium in size with a long coat. Annie has fastened a black collar around his neck and holds onto a leash. Ysengrin, if he were here, would go bald from outrage. 

“I don’t see the point in rushing,” Annie says. She’s wearing an abstract expression on her face that suggests a second breakfast. Donuts, most likely. They walked to Boston from their Cambridge hotel, and the second they crossed the Charles, it’s as though a switch flipped and every second shop became a donut hovel. Sometimes she bends down to pet his head, to take pleasure in his soft fur and the hard skull rising out of tight-pulled muscle and skin. She slips fingers beneath the collar, tugs at it lightly. Like Surma, she sometimes torments him unknowingly. 

“People back home never seem to mind your wolf form,” she says. “I wonder why they do here.” 

“I don’t think they have wolves up here,” Kat says. “They have coyotes, though.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, I overheard a guy talking about it when we were at that layover in Chicago.” Kat was the one who had to sit next to him, but Renard remembers the conversation as well for the strikingly nasal quality of the man’s voice. Boston is a city with trees, but barely any grass. It’s easy to imagine birds living here and mangy cats with clever eyes licking their lips in anticipation, but not a coyote. 

Annie seems more impressed. She says, “Huh.” For a moment she looks like she might ask about Coyote. Kat’s eyes are drifting towards her cellphone. Annie straightens up and offers an arm with glossy gallantry: “Lunch, my dear?” 

Kat sticks her arm through the proffered gap and hooks it through, all distractions forgotten. 

“Ice cream!” she says. 

*** 

They stop by the bookstore first. He has Annie stand on her tiptoes to pick up books on the top shelves. At one point Kat sneaks off to check her phone and comes back with a book on computer science. 

“Look!” she says, brandishing it. “I found something.” They all know she was texting someone. 

“It’s so old, though,” Annie says. 

“Yeah, it’s from the nineties. But, you know. Hmm.” 

She retreats to the back to reshelf the book. Annie runs her fingers along the spines of some older, leather-bound books. 

“Aesop,” Renard says, inspired into a sudden disdain. 

“Want to look at the illustrations?” she says. She takes the book from the shelf and lays it out on the floor. The text is in Latin and the illustrations are woodprint. She thumbs through the text, occasionally pointing and laughing into her hand. “Do you know any of them?” 

“Child, they were made before my time.” 

“Not the stories. The characters.” She’s paused on a tale of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as though she believes Ysengrin has ever gone prancing up to farmers, snuggled in an ovine's gory hollow. 

“No.” He puts a paw on the page. The paper crinkles beneath his weight. Kat has returned, and the shopkeeper is looking at them with growing confusion, as though he is just now realizing: what is that dog doing in here? 

They leave with _The Season of Butlers,_ _The Captive Duchess_ , _One Last Chance_ , and _Exit Wound_. He turns back to his plush form and curls up in her shoulder bag with _The Captive Duchess_ and one of Annie’s handkerchiefs. Above him, Annie and Kat walk down one street, then another, laughing and gasping; but the silences grow longer and deeper as the sun lifts itself over their heads, hot and imperious. 

By four o’clock they’ve returned to the hotel. Kat goes down to the cafe with her laptop and Annie sprawls out on the bed for a nap, with Renard sitting on Kat’s pillow. Her sleep is fitful and strained, and it’s clear enough that she wakes up and spends at least a few minutes with her eyes shut pretending she’s still out. Then she rolls onto her back, legs bent one way, chest another. She meets Renard’s eyes over the top of his book, her face scrunched with a question. 

She says nothing for a long while. Renard eventually turns his eyes back to the page: _And so the duchess went flying from the duke into the cold, barren wilderness of the northern forest—_

Finally she says, demanding an answer, “What’s with Kat? I know you talk to her sometimes… about anime.” She says the last part with decreasing conviction. 

“You don’t know?” he says as the duchess is kidnapped from the woods by a band of highwaymen. “She is in love.” 

“ _What_? You think so, really?”

“Why do you think she’s spending so much time with her phone?” 

“Robot… stuff!” 

“Haha!”

She swats his butt. She twists some more until she’s on her stomach. Her legs kick behind her, bouncing off the bed, hitting her buttocks, then swinging back the other way. She plucks at the sheets. “Well—well, of course. I knew that.” 

The highwaymen hold a knife to the duchess’ throat. She begs for her life! The duke comes chasing after her, crying, “Oh, Liz!” The slimy head of the gang, with his black teeth and singular, black eye with his rough kisses and closed-lipped smiles. The highwayman knocks out his teeth and replaces them with a false set made of ivory. Look at my mouth, the highwayman thinks. In a past life my teeth made lions fear for their lives. 

“She’s not with a robot, is she?” Annie says, chewing on the nail of her thumb. For a few weeks after she came back from the forests, her nails were in tatters, the smooth arching curve replaced by something that looks more like the border of beach and wave. She does not, it turns out, like using nail clippers. 

“Haha! No.”

The duke has found the duchess in the arms of a highwayman. He roars, furious, and chops the highwayman to pieces. He brings the duchess back to the castle, drinks amber whiskey, and rages, Oh, how, Liz, could you betray me so! Annie has moved on from nail chewing to crossing her arms and shutting her eyes. Thinking. 

“Stop reading that,” Annie says, pushing the book down. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“But I am nearing the end!” he cries. “Surma would have never torn me from the Duchess and the Duke so.” 

“The duchess is going to die.”

He turns the page, ignoring her.

“That’s how they always end,” she says. “Everyone knows that.”

She lets him finish the book. The duke dies, and the duchess follows him into death, and they are happily reunited in the glorious, white afterlife. Renard sniffs at the pages and says, “What nonsense.” 

*** 

This time they head in the opposite direction, deeper into Cambridge and away from the river. Then when Annie realizes they’ve gone the wrong way, they double back. Cars and bikers are stalled on the road, and the platform for the MGH stop is packed. The water glints with a mischievous light, the sun glints like one of Coyote’s many teeth. 

They walk past the hospital complex. He notices her turning her head around, the cool assessment of her gaze, even as she walks with long strides towards the city’s center. Doctors, nurses, people pushing their way on foot, on bike, by car, through the traffic. And of course the tourists, the out-of-state visitors, all hoping for a cure. 

“Look at their purses,” Renard says in a low voice. “If Coyote were here, we would steal the jewels and gold on the surfaces!” 

Annie tugs on the leash. He squawks. She walks faster, fast enough that Renard has to trot to keep up. 

“Ysengrin would’ve done worse,” Annie says. 

“He would never. Not as long as Coyote was watching.” 

“Coyote couldn’t have been watching you all the time.” 

They wait for a light to change. He walks over to some flowers, pees on them, and sniggers. 

“Renard!” Annie says. She hits him over the head. “What’s gotten into you?” 

“Let’s see Ysengrin get me from here,” he gloats. Annie, the willing pupil, takes Renard by the ear and yanks. The ragged edges of her nails catches along the flesh. When he whines, she rubs his head and leads him, with a little pull of the rope, across the street. 

It’s a peculiar kind of freedom he’s found for himself these days. 

***

Eventually they come to a large garden, overstuffed with honking geese and ducks. Annie takes her shoes off, sits in the grass, and sighs. She takes off the leash. Renard sits across her legs and roots through her bag. He can smell meat and sure enough he finds a sandwich. 

“Prosciutto?” he says.

“It’s mine,” she says, but gives him half anyway. Their breath smells the same, a wet, meaty smell that makes him sigh and lick her fingers. Annie runs her fingers along the top of the grass, occasionally turning her head to look behind her when a large bus or car goes whooshing past. The gardens of Boston are large, but the sound is still that of the city. Still, there are far more trees here than there are in the Court. He licks her wrist. 

Annie says, “I wonder how Ysengrin is doing.”

Renard is tempted to pee on another flower. 

Annie pulls out a handful of grass. She’s looking at the flowers with a furtive, thoughtful expression. “Could you get me some of those?” she says, pointing to some tulips near the entrance to the Commons. “I want to bring them back to Ysengrin.” 

“No,” he says. “They will kick me.”

“You just said you’d be happy to steal the gold from women’s purses.”

“Child, when I wish to be a thief, I’m not doing so to deface public works of art.”

“Works of art?” she says, and rolls her eyes. She lies back in the grass and closes her eyes. Then she opens them again and says, “Renard, has anyone ever loved you?” 

“What!” he says. He stands up, walks in a little circle. He sits next to Annie, near her arm and says, “Child, what makes you ask?” 

“Everyone loved my mother.”

“And plenty love you! Who has planted such silly ideas in your head?” 

“No one planted anything!” She puts her palm against her face, then says, with an irked expression, “It’s weird, how everyone I know is falling in love, but I haven’t. Is that weird? It’s weird.” 

“Haha! It is the springtime of your youth.” 

“Not for me,” she says. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, hair trailing up and over her shoulder like the escaping tail of a snake. “I know I’m being silly.” 

“Yes, you are.” He thinks about Jack, with his spring heels, and his tail thumps on the ground. “Child, loving someone is far harder than being loved.” 

“Hmm,” she says, and tugs at his fur, displeased. “I’m sorry my mother tricked you.” 

“I am not.” He puts his head on her shoulder. “If Surma had not tricked me, we never would have crossed.” 

“Sometimes I wish you were my father,” she says. Her voice is so quiet, it’s as though it drops from her mouth directly into his ear; like a stone falling into a well. “I wish my mother would have married someone as kind as you, Renard.” 

Ah, but she doesn’t know. Had Surma loved him, there would be no child. He would have hoarded Surma’s love like gold, and he would have never risked the chance of some turnip-faced babe stealing Surma from him. Tony Carver, that lumpish, cowardly man, at least had the ambition to keep the wife and the child before his great flop and flounce; yet it was all Renard could do to bring himself to love the child. He lets her run her hands through the fur on his neck and back and thinks, If only Surma had sent you to me sooner. 

“Who is it?” Annie says. “The one Kat’s seeing?” 

“Oh. The animal girl. The one with the pigeons.”

“Wait, what? You mean Paz? I thought she just worked with cows. What pigeon?” She pulls away, scowls, then shrugs. “Well,” she says. “Good for her. Good for both of them. Want to get cake?” 

*** 

For the rest of their walk through the city, Annie keeps the leash off and lets him walk at her heel. She keeps the collar on, to deter thieves and the police. It jangles as they stroll through the city like a bell. 

Before they return to the hotel, Annie picks up a box of pastries from a bakery. It’s past dinner when she returns. 

“Surprise!” she says, holding up the box. 

It’s only Kat in the room. Kat goes up immediately to her and says, “Where’ve you been? I was so worried about you!” 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Renard wanted to go for a walk and I left my phone here and got lost. But look! Cake!” 

“I thought dogs were supposed to be good at getting home,” Kat says, ruffling Renard’s head. “Bad doggie.” 

“Forgive me. I wanted to keep her for myself.” 

“Ha! Rey just doesn’t want to admit he was lost.” 

The box is wrapped with butcher's twine. To undo the knot, Annie lights a fire at her finger, and burns through the string. 

“I’ve been learning a lot of things from Coyote,” Annie says, as though she expects Kat to be jealous. “Ysengrin, too. Nothing as interesting as pigeons, though.” 

Kat pops the box open, but she isn’t looking inside. She squints. “Pigeons?” 

“Birds? Ones with legs? Forget it.” She offers her arm out and says, “Shall we feast on the fruits of my labor, my lady?” 

She takes Annie by the hand. Annie spins Kat around—the cannolis slide, the cake smushes against the box walls, the cookies clatter—then releases her. “Ooh, Mr. Darcy, ooh.”

“Haha, Ms. Bennet!” Whether from pleasure or exertion, deep within a fire turns her cheeks pink and warms her blood. Beneath her lipstick, her lips are red.


End file.
